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Thursday, October 15, 2015

How to write faster and increase your writing output

Every night I cook dinner for my family.

Apart from the two nights I had away with my husband for our
20th anniversary a few months ago, I’ve been cooking dinner for my
family every night for about the last 5,840 nights. And every night has gone
roughly along the same lines; I spend ages working hard, chopping, preparing
and cooking. I serve it up on the plate. We eat, and it’s gone in about 13
minutes flat.

So much time! So much effort! So much energy! And all to see
it disappear with hardly another thought.

Writing is like cooking in many ways – it takes a long time
to do. Like many of us, I’ve had times where I’ve agonized for three hours on
just three paragraphs, getting it perfect.

“Would you read this?” we ask someone. “I’m just not sure
about the second word in the fourth sentence, and the juxtaposition of evil and
good in the third metaphor.”

I’ve been mentoring a talented teenage writer for the past
year over Skype. She writes, I read and comment, and she rewrites and improves.
It’s a fun relationship.

A few months ago she got frustrated. “I’ve got all these
ideas, and not much time, and because everything takes so long to do, I don’t
end up finishing anything.”

I know the feeling. If only we had more time, we say. But
the fact is that we don’t. Life crowds in and swallows up those precious
writing hours. “It’s not going to change,” I told her. “The only way out of it
is to learn to write quicker. You’ve got to produce more in a shorter time.”

Some writers will be horrified to hear this. “What about
quality?” they will argue. “What about the second word in the fourth sentence
and the juxtaposition of evil and good in the third metaphor? How can I write
if the muse has not struck?”

Let me say this: learning to write more quickly, at the same
or better level of quality, is possible. It’s possible in all other areas of
life, so why not writing?

When I cook dinner, I’m a bit of a ditherer. The reason it
takes me a long time is because half the time I’m still cleaning the kitchen
from lunch time, or I’m checking facebook, or I’m making a shopping list. My
mind is frequently very much elsewhere. I'm well known to be *that* mother who burns the dinner because she's still writing emails.

And then I watched Masterchef. Those guys produce three
course banquets in less time than it takes me to cut up a bowl of salad. They
think, they grab ingredients and they multitask so it works. The whole dish comes together within the
ridiculous time slot.

These people aren’t freaks of nature (although they
obviously ended up with talents for food and flavour that I just don’t have.) What
they’ve learned is how to organise themselves, how to manage tasks, and how to
keep going and how to solve problems that pop up as they go.

They cook fast because they’ve learned how. And their
quality doesn’t suffer.

We writers can write fast if we learn how. And our quality
doesn’t have to suffer either.

Here’s how I’ve doubled my writing output over the past
year.

1.Set aside the time. Dedicate it entirely to
writing.

2.Turn off Facebook and all the other
distractions.

3.Have a good ergonomic setup so your body stays
comfortable.

4.Plan your writing before you start. I always
know what I’ll be focusing on that day, with a reasonably detailed idea of
where my piece is going (although I’m open to things the characters might do on
their own)

5.Tell your inner editor to sit down. Their turn
comes later. It’s writing time right now. Editing comes after that. They can
have a nap and relax.

6.If you get to a bit you can’t write, don’t stop.
Just bunny hop over it and go on to the next bit. You can come back later.

7.Just write it. Accept that you’re not a bad writer,
or a terrible person if you write a draft that’s not superb. A bad first draft
is better than no first draft.

8.Practice this at least twice a week for two months and see how much quicker you get.

9.Set yourself a deadline to finish your draft and
do the maths about how many writing sessions you’ll have, and how many words
you’ll need to do to get there.

10.Just do it.

Cecily Paterson is the author of three novels for young teen girls, and an award-winning memoir, Love Tears & Autism. She is a freelance editor and writer and has just published the best-selling Meditations Bible colouring book by Lorien Atwood. www.cecilypaterson.com

18 comments:

Hi Cecily - thanks for a great blog. Some fantastic tips there. Actually, it sounds a lot like what works with NaNoWriMo. Of course, then you have to factor in time for editing, revising and more editing. And I'm learning just how much time it takes to turn a manuscript into a published book. Like some intricate French pastry - what takes days, months, even years to produce can be consumed in mere hours. But what an experience :)

Wow, thanks for this wonderful post Cecily. I know I must work on being more disciplined. I get distracted so easily and end up trying to multi-task. Not a good plan really. There are some wonderful tips here - so now to go and adopt some of them.

Thanks Cecily. Good work on doubling your output. What you say is so true. I did the NaNoWriMo virtual cabin in July and wrote 30 000 words. I've hardly written anything since then and really need to get back into it. When you have a plan and then just make the time regardless, it happens. It's amazing how all of those little bits add up. Thanks for the reminder.

Great advice Cecily. Thank you. And well done for doubling your output. That's awesome. It's very true that we have lots of time wasters on our hands - and we need to cut them out and focus! I know God will hold us accountable for our use of time. Thanks for the reminder.

Its all so true, so why do I have trouble following such a simple plan? I can write first drafts easily following these guidelines. But to edit? Ah I'm so slow and so critical of my own work. But I'm determined to allocate the time as soon as I get back from conference.